


Cultural Literacy

by Arsenic, arsenicarcher (Arsenic)



Series: 14 Valentines [11]
Category: Black Dagger Brotherhood - J. R. Ward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-30
Updated: 2010-07-30
Packaged: 2020-06-25 12:35:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19745893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/pseuds/Arsenic, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/pseuds/arsenicarcher
Summary: Four months into their marriage, Phury had to go meet with V about one thing or another...





	Cultural Literacy

**Author's Note:**

> Written for 14 valentines challenge, theme "Education"

Four months into their marriage, Phury had to go meet with V about one thing or another--unless it involved Phury possibly coming back in pieces, Cormia didn't inquire too much--and she spent the whole night reading a book about fried green tomatoes. She'd been expecting it to be like the mysteries she'd found at the public library the month before, with recipes involved. By the time she realized she was wrong, she was too involved in the novel to care. Phury came home to her crying like someone had died and promptly went completely insane.

He was on her in a second, trying to find where she was hurt, trying to understand why she was so upset. She kept trying to tell him that she was fine, but until he had ascertained for himself that she wasn't bleeding or otherwise impaired, she couldn't calm him down enough to get him to hear, "Book. It was just the book."

He blinked at her for several moments on end before asking, "A book?"

"All the books where I came from had happy endings." She shrugged a little.

Phury swept her hair from her face--he had already done so, several times, but she recognized it for the gesture of care that it was--and kissed the skin at the edge of her eyes. "I can read all the books, find the ones that have happy endings."

She laughed, and kissed him. "I _want_ to cry, love. I want-- I want winter and fall and tears and pain and everything I've never had."

Phury scowled. "I want you happy and warm and safe."

"It's a good thing I always plan on coming home to you, then, I suppose."

He tried to hold onto his consternation, she could tell, but he failed. Miserably.

*

It was hard, spending time at Marissa's home for women, but Cormia loved it. For one thing, Marissa was always having unexpected ideas, like the time the power went out and she turned the whole place into a campfire site with s'mores and everything. Or the time one of the kids got too sick to make a field trip to the theater and she and the others put on a whole "production" for him the next day. But more than that, the women there reminded her of herself, shut away, decisions made for them, scared to break free but finally choosing to do so.

She learned a million things from them: how to do makeup with flair so that nobody would look at what's underneath, how to treat and bandage minor wounds, how to cook basic comfort foods like macaroni and cheese and beef stew, how to change a diaper, how to pick a lock, how to change a tire, and how to rollerblade. The women all knew different things, had different experiences, and sooner or later, they would talk about them, even if they would never talk about the person they'd left, or what had happened.

But Cormia didn't need to know sordid details, she just liked the stories, how far from her own they were, and what they taught her about the world she was living in now. It was like reading an encyclopedia born with a sailor's mouth. (Sometimes she tried out the words she learned from the women in front of Phury. It would never cease to be funny. _Never_.)

*

Layla and Cormia had discovered their common love of arts and crafts--which more often ended in disaster than not--on the day that Layla brought home a beading kit from a bookstore and two of the girls managed to _swallow_ beads by the end of the evening. Still, they also managed to actually create bracelets--well, pieces that looked vaguely like bracelets and after that there was no stopping either of them.

Cormia could tell Phury wanted to put his foot down when they signed up at the local community center for a night time stained glass class--his exact words being: "We had to get medical attention for Layla after the incident with the _sno-cone_ machine, Cor," but they were not to be dissuaded.

Cormia said, "We're vampires. We heal pretty quickly. She doesn't even have a _scar_."

Phury opened his mouth and she said, "You hunted Lessers for a few hundred years. I think we can both agree that me taking an arts and crafts class isn't really the sort of leap-without-looking type behavior you've practiced."

"Our species depends on the Brotherhood--"

"Well, maybe our species needs some more art."

"But not in a life and death sense."

"You did see where I came from, right? Our sense of aesthetics on high?"

"But nobody was dying."

Cormia rolled her eyes. "Just inside, is all."

Phury was silent at that. Then he asked, "What's the cost?"

*

Bella was the one who introduced Cormia to the Kama Sutra.

They'd gone through the positions together, each of them curious at different ones, telling each other stories that Z and Phury would have died knowing were being discussed behind their backs. There was one were Cormia said, "I'm pretty sure my body doesn't work that way."

Bella said, "That was what I thought. Then I took up yoga."

Cormia grinned. "Yoga, huh?"

*

In the evenings, when Cormia woke up, she often walked around the house, listening for everyone, making sure that all was as it should be.

In the shower, she always kept two types of soaps or two different-scented shampoo, just to have the choice between them. She could spend thirty minutes deciding what color shirt to wear, if she let herself. There were so many colors, and they all felt different depending on her mood.

What type of shoe she wore depended on the weather, or if she even planned to go out.

What she ate for breakfast was dependent wholly on what sounded good, and if it was a number of things, she made them all. One evening, Phury came down to find her in the middle of a batch of pancakes, with bread in the toaster, eggs cracked into a bowl, a package of bacon out on the counter. He asked, "Hungry?" his eyes a little wide.

She said, "Woke up and couldn't remember what everything tasted like."

He came up behind her and rubbed her shoulders. "You have time to relearn."

She nodded. "Yes, just, I'm impatient."

He helped her make the eggs.


End file.
